The number of Russians who like U.S. President Donald Trump has doubled from 13 percent in April to 27 percent now, the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) said.
The share of Russians who have no liking for Trump is down, from 39 percent in April to 22 percent of 1,200 respondents polled on the phone across the country on July 9-10.
Russian President Vladimir Putin had the first face-to-face contact with Trump on July 7 on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Hamburg. The meeting lasted for more than two hours.
Eighty-nine percent of the respondents said they either knew of that meeting or heard something about it, and only 10 percent learned about the Putin-Trump meeting from the sociologists.
As to what subjects the presidents had addressed, 33 percent of the respondents mentioned Syria, 24 percent – Ukraine, 13 percent – Russia-U.S. relations, 7 percent – the war on terrorism and ISIL (a terrorist organization banned in Russia), 5 percent – the Russian hackers, and 4 percent – Russia’s influence on the U.S. presidential election and North Korea.
Almost half of Russians (48 percent) expect Russia to benefit from the Putin-Trump encounter, while 38 percent do not think it can have any practical results for Russia, and 1 percent anticipates negative implications.
A general improvement of Russia-U.S. relations is expected by 48 percent of the respondents, while 2 percent believe the relations will exacerbate, and 41 percent do not predict any change.
Describing Russia-U.S. relations, 32 percent of the respondents called them tense and cool, and 10 percent said they were hostile. Fifteen percent described the relations as normal and calm, and only 3-4 percent called them neighborly and amicable.
